Hello and welcome to the Slate Political Gab Fest for Friday, December 30th. This is the 2011

Conundrum Edition. I'm Emily Bazelon. I'm here with David Plotz, who is in Washington,

and John Dickerson, who is off at some nicer place.

And we are gathered here together to talk about conundra.

The first conundrum is what the plural of conundrum is.

I prefer conundra, even though it's probably wrong.

And I wanted to start by asking a question that I actually find frequently plagues me because I generally am too opinionated, which is, if you care about someone, you have a dear friend or relative who is about to make what it seems to you to be like a pretty big mistake about a life decision, in particular something like getting engaged to someone you think is wrong for your loved one, but could even be like buying a house.

Are you just supposed to keep your mouse shut pretty much no matter what or are there circumstances in which it is actually a good idea to speak up?

David, what do you think?

Well, I would divide into two categories here because I think there's a category of decisions involving objects, decisions involving buying a house or buying a car or where to move, which is one set of decisions.

And then there are decisions about people you're going to spend your life with. Like,

am I going to marry? Mostly, am I going to, should I marry? Should I marry this person? Should I not

marry this person? Should we have children? Whatever it is. And I would say with the former category,

the first category, which is category of should I buy this house, you absolutely can speak up

and you may offend your friend. You may make them feel uncomfortable and they may resent it,

but you do a good duty and you're unlikely to poison anything irrevocably. With the second category,

in particular, should I marry this girl or not, it's incredibly

risky.

And you have to say to yourself, if I say this, it is very likely that whether or not he

marries her, my relationship with my friend is going to be destroyed.

So do I, am I doing enough, am I willing to sacrifice a relationship for his long term happiness? And if you think that

he's going to make such a terrible mistake that this person is a con artist or likely murderer or

...